“Is it real? Is it a dream? ‘Cause I’m in bed. Alone, it seems.”

Tentatively, and yet with dogged persistence, as is necessary when one decides to move a mountain, things are happening with my script again. Things have been happening all along, but the pattern is now stalled. This must not stand. I was (obviously) busy getting well in 2013. I had to put some things on the back burner. I hated doing it. But I was sick and also had all of these new responsibilities with the Ebert gig, etc. But it’s time to move that mountain again. I moved it in 2009 basically by following my cousin Mike’s writing prompt, where suddenly, out of nowhere, an idea came, and a script blossomed in my head. That then led to the first reading of what would end up being my script in LA. I moved the mountain again in 2010 when I finished the damn play, and 2011 was the real push, with the workshop in LA, the reading in Chicago (the title of the script has since changed, I changed it following the reading in Chicago), followed by the Vineyard Theatre reading in 2012. I didn’t do all of this alone, I had a lot of help, but I do need to remind myself that in a way I DID do it alone, because I wrote the damn thing. You have to have a product in the first place in order to move mountains. So anyway. There are things I CAN’T control and there are things I CAN. Having a swanky agent is awesome, but things cannot just stop because of that. This is a common error with representation. The hustle is so exhausting that you sign with an agent and then just sit back waiting for something to happen. I haven’t done that, not exactly, but in the last couple of months, as I have actually experienced what it feels like to be well, the script I wrote started looming in my mind again. I’ve re-read it a couple of times, and found myself thinking, “Damn. This is pretty good. Okay, let’s get this thing going again.”

Also, side note: I was extremely sick when I wrote the script. At least the first draft of it, in 2009, when I should have been hospitalized. But I wasn’t hospitalized. I wrote the script instead. I had a BLAST writing it. 2010 was a year of recovery from 2009, and in that cooler-headed space, I finished it. There are all kinds of interesting things going on here, with creativity and illness, and the ebbs and flows of it, something that I realize is quite common. I was almost afraid to re-read it because I was afraid all I would see is how sick I was. But I don’t see that at all. It’s super-sad, even bleak, even though it’s also the kind of script where good actors can get a laugh on almost every line. I would never write it now. It is not autobiographical, but it is the expression of a hopeless person. But that doesn’t mean it seems SICK. It honestly doesn’t. I worked that script into shape, through illness and recovery. I was glad to re-read it and find it to be an entertaining, romantic, sexy play with a sucker-punch in the final 20 minutes. I’m proud of it, and also amazed that I wrote it at all, considering what was going on in 2009 and 2010. That’s gumption! Go, Iron Man!

There is nothing to report, no announcement, nothing like that, just an internal adjustment to move that thing from the back burner to the front. There are already some pretty funny stories about this whole journey, but I’ll only tell them when I’m further down the path. The basic gist is that I would love it (ha) if a star wanted to do this thing. That would certainly help move the process along FAST. So I have been basically tracking stars down (people who would be right for the two parts, in my Best-Case Dream Scenario) and sending them the script. Not many of them, but a couple, and there are moments where I am laughing at myself. Who the hell do you think you are? But again: when you have a PRODUCT, it gives you LEVERAGE. They are not annoyed to hear from this stranger sending them the script (and often that is because I have been set up properly by a mutual friend, or whatever), but in all cases, they are polite and also psyched to have something to read, something they may want to DO, if they could swing it. Nobody has been rude to me. I have had some great email exchanges. My agent was like, “Listen, if so-and-so said she wants to do it, then obviously we would have a production.” You realize that’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Getting to “these people” is not as difficult as you might think, especially once you have a product and a REASON for contacting them, outside of, “OMG I Heart You.” Obviously, that can’t be the only thing I’m doing at this time, because it’s a long shot anyway. The point is is to get a production of this thing up. So that’s starting, the conversation is starting. A cliche sometimes helps. And “The Lord helps those who help themselves” has come to mind.

I’m sharing this video clip of the band Air Traffic Controller (they opened for Bleu when I saw him at Rockwood Music Hall and that’s how I got into them) because the song is one of those “soundtracks to my script” songs (I have written about this before). There’s a dreamy and dramatic quality to the sound of “Magic” by Air Traffic Controller, almost portentous, which is suggestive of the ultimate journey that the two characters go on, together, and alone, in my script. Once they emerge from the wreckage, it is not clear what was real, what was a dream, and it may be better to think of their short relationship as a fevered dream as opposed to a real-life event with all kinds of implications about roads-not-taken and missed-opportunities. Air Traffic Controller is a wonderful band, and their latest album was produced by Bleu. This is my favorite song on the album, but they’re all wonderful.

I had a meeting with my doctor yesterday, one of the doctors who helped me get well last year, and we talked about all of this, my script, and 2014, and etc. I said, “Well, you’ll have to come see it – if it’s done in New York, that is.” He said, “I’m flying to LA if it opens in LA.” He’s awesome.